Projector

Projector develops browser-based, real-time collaborative design software aimed at visual communication in the workplace. The product was described as combining elements of presentation software, collaborative documents and social image feeds, letting teams build visually oriented presentations together in a browser.

The company was founded by Trevor O'Brien, a former director of product management at Twitter who previously worked at Google's associate product manager program, YouTube and Coda, and Jeremy Gordon, formerly vice president of engineering at Twitter and chief technology officer at Sega Studios. O'Brien served as chief executive officer and Gordon as chief technology officer. As of May 2019 the company had 13 employees and was based in downtown San Francisco. Internal records indicate Projector was later acquired by Medium.

Founding story

Trevor O'Brien and Jeremy Gordon met at Twitter in 2013 and found a shared background in the gaming industry: O'Brien had spent a year as an engineer at games startup Mad Doc Software, while Gordon had been chief technology officer at Sega Studios. Gordon left Twitter in 2014 for an entrepreneur-in-residence role at Redpoint Ventures before O'Brien pitched him the idea that became Projector. O'Brien had earlier left a PhD program in computer graphics and information visualization at Brown University to join Google. Investor Mark Suster of Upfront Ventures met O'Brien in 2017 during a Defy Ventures entrepreneurship workshop held at a correctional facility, and subsequently backed the company.

Business model

At the time of its public introduction the tool suite was offered free while it was being tested. The company had not settled on a monetization approach, but its chief executive indicated an expectation of adopting a per-user monthly subscription model similar to Slack's.

No paid pricing was in place during the testing period; management anticipated per-user monthly subscription pricing.

Traction

As of May 2019 the company had 13 employees, had raised $13 million across two rounds, and had opened its product to invited testers ahead of a general launch.

Latest developments

In May 2019 the company publicly described its product for the first time and began inviting users to test it. A subsequent SEC-related listing associates Projector.is, Inc. with a California-based venture financing filing in July 2021.